


Of Suns and Moons

by absolut_svensk



Category: Starfighter (Comic), Starfighter Eclipse
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Selene is the embodiment of perfection, Starfighter: Eclipse, Valentina being a good big sister, mild spoilers for Eclipse, poor Helios, references to Cain and Abel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:24:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4002295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absolut_svensk/pseuds/absolut_svensk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are twenty-two years old when you fall in love with a boy who doesn’t love himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Suns and Moons

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many feels for Helios and Selene that I don't know what to do with myself, so I tried to get them out. 100% unbeta'd, as per all my stuff, so please forgive me for any grammar goofs. Doing a bit of experimenting with style (again)... hopefully it works for this, idk.
> 
> I just... I have so much love for Selene in particular; I want somebody (looking at you, Helios) to love and appreciate him because he just seems so insecure, like he doesn't love himself, but he should, because he is beautiful, always and in all ways.

When you are five years old, you go hungry for the first time.

It’s so painful that it wakes you in the middle of the night, your legs weak, your bloated belly churning and roiling. You twist your fingers in your grimy blanket, nudge at your sister, whining. She just scratches at your scalp and apologizes. There is no food. Hasn’t been any for a long time. Says she’ll try to get you some, though, somehow or another. You don’t know how she does it, but she always finds a way to scrounge some scraps for you, doesn’t like it when you’re so hungry that you vomit bile. 

(She’s three years your senior, and yet her face is already set in hard lines. You think she used to smile, once upon a time, but you aren’t sure. Wonder if maybe you just dreamed it - always dreaming of nicer places, of a warm bed, of being treated gently once, just once.)

From the other end of your family’s tiny flat you hear your mama and papa fighting again. There’s the sound of breaking glass, of an angry shriek, a harsh slap. Put your hands over your ears, press your face into your greasy pillow, try to think of anything but this, of being anywhere but this. Your sister’s arm is tightly around your waist. You try to hide from the world beneath what’s left of your ratty blanket. She prepares to meet it head on, all teeth and nails and ready to defend you.

You don’t peep out from where you’ve hidden your face for what feels like an eternity. Finally do, uncover your ears real slow like. Everything’s silent save for the clanking of the broken radiator in the corner, the low moaning of somebody in pain.

(Think it might be your mama. Too afraid to find out. Already covered in bruises, don’t love her enough to risk your father’s ire again. You are not a bright child, sleepy and inattentive with malnutrition, but pain is a great teacher, and you learn its lessons quickest of all.)

Your sister’s fingers are in your hair, now, trying to soothe you back to sleep. Your belly aches so badly, but you don’t ask for food again. Just curl up against her, tears leaking silently from your eyes, learned long ago that crying gets you nowhere. Everyone here suffers. Nobody pities you. Sometimes you can’t help it, though, and you soak through the pillow anyways.

Or, at least you used to. But you are five years old, now, and you are running out of tears to cry. 

\-------

Two weeks before your ninth birthday, they kick the door down in the middle of the night. Your sister is awake in a flash, if she’d even been asleep at all. Shoves you through the broken window and out onto the fire escape before you can even cry out. You feel a pane of broken glass slice into your leg, tearing your trousers. Blood squirting out. Say nothing, just move automatically and wholly without thinking. Shimmy down the rusted stairs, tumble onto the ground.

‘ _Run, Afon!_ ’ she calls after you, and you pick yourself up from the mud and run, run away from the housing blocks, from the novostroiki. Run faster than you’ve ever run in your whole life. Run until you’re wheezing, until your heart is ready to burst from your chest; run until your legs give out beneath you, until you fall to your knees in a field of slush and mud several kilometers from your flat.

‘ _Valentina!_ ’ you cry out, but the bitter wind carries your voice away.

For the first time in your life, you feel wholly and completely alone. You claw at your hair,as if doing so could banish the thoughts of masked goons dragging your sister away to a gulag to rot, and then call out for her again, and again, until you are completely hoarse. When your voice is gone, when you are so tired that you cannot see straight, you find the nearest ditch and huddle in it, in a puddle of mud and slush, waiting for her, because you know she’ll follow you. Valentina always finds a way - she would never forsake you, would never leave you to face the universe on your own. 

You curl up against the wind and try to sleep, but you can’t. A sob escapes you, and then another - low, guttural sounds. But there are no tears - you have cried a thousand times in your short life, and you’ve long since run out of them.

\-------

One summer, you come across a dead rat in the gutter near the central market, its belly swollen with gases as it decomposes in the heat. You are twelve years old, dim-witted but curious, and you stop to poke at its belly with a stick, intrigued by the way the pointed end leaves an indentation. You wonder if its ribs have been broken; you know all too well how painful that is. 

(Your sister told you to never turn your back on groups of people, lest they try to take advantage of you, to overcome you, to steal what few rubles you have in your pocket. That makes you angry, because you’ve always wanted to assume the best of people, always wanted to find _some_ sort of saving grace about your world and the cruel, hardened people in it. Many of your rubles have come from older people you’ve met. Some of them only want your help in lifting things - you are tall and remarkably strong for your age. Others make you do things that you don’t understand, make you touch them in places you don’t want to. But it’s the only way, because you are too young to work at the factories, and without their money, you would not eat, so you just close your eyes and think about the pictures of Earth that you saw in a magazine once, and do what it is that they ask of you.)

You mean to be quick about it - you look away from the group of gopniks lingering around the corner store chain-smoking and staring at you only for long enough to poke the rat one last time. Too late: rough hands grabbing at your shoulders, dirty fingers shoving into your pockets, shaking you down, taking all you have. You kick and yell and squirm, your fist catching one of them in the nose, and then a bottle comes down over your head and the whole world goes dark.

Drag yourself back to the abandoned building you and your sister have been squatting in late that night, filled with a crushing shame. Your sister takes one look at you and knows what’s happened. Doesn’t yell at you, though, doesn’t curse at you either - never disciplined you with blows. Every time you fall, every time you make a mistake - and you have a particular talent for doing just that - she patches you up, kisses you where you hurt. Tells you that someday, _someday_ she’ll take you somewhere nice, far away from the things and people that mean to hurt you.

You tell her what happened, and she rubs the small of your back, tries to comfort you. Says that’s how it is for people like us, colonists, but there’s a way out. Pulls a crumpled flyer from the pocket of her jacket, written in your mother tongue. It’s for the _Alliance_ , she tells you. Says she’s going to join as soon as she’s old enough, and that you should follow, says you only have to worry about surviving until then. You nod and smile and somehow the pain in your limbs seems less, because for the first time, salvation is tangible, a light at the end of the tunnel. It doesn’t hurt so bad, now, because in a few years it’s all going to be over.

(You never make that mistake again, never turn your back on people you don’t know. Their blows rained down on your back, your head, and with each broken rib, each ugly, black-and-blue bruise, they pummeled the trust out of you.)

\------- 

You are fifteen years old when your sister makes good on her promise. You knew this was coming but somehow you feel angry and abandoned and alone, and you chase her all the way to the loading docks. There are ships there that you’ve never seen, people in uniforms you don’t recognize, and you yell and shout at her and try to grab the straps on her pack to stop her from going - you’re bigger than her, after all, bigger and stronger, and you could stop her if you wanted to.

She disarms you as easily as she always has, turns around and stands on her tiptoes to kiss your grimy forehead, tells you it won’t be long before you can follow, and you’ll be free. Promises to write to you, send you logs of what she’s doing - pictures, even, if she can. Tells you to keep your chin up, to not lose hope, reminds you there’s a light at the end of your tunnel, that your time will come soon.

Your throat is thick and tight with emotion and you don’t say anything, you just stand and watch her go, stomach sinking into your ripped canvas shoes, two sizes too small. You run your hands through your greasy hair, trudge back to the abandoned block real slow. Puke your dinner in the alleyway once you’re there, then get angry at yourself for doing that, because you’re not going to eat again for a long while.

You can’t sleep that night, still angry and nauseous and lonely and cold, too goddamn cold without her there at your side. You slink out onto the rickety fire escape, stare up at the stars. Wonder how many million light years away from you she’ll be soon, wonder if you’ll ever see her again.

(Turns out you do still have a few tears left to cry - they drip off the tip of your nose and fall to the ground below.)

\-------

You turn twenty in the hot and stinking belly of an Alliance barracks ship, having followed in your sister’s footsteps just like you said you would. She sent you study materials for the Navigator test (you told her how badly you wanted to become one), but you failed it anyways, couldn’t learn the material without her there to explain it to you. Always been slow-witted, thick-skulled, always been better with your fists than your words. 

The other fighters are like a pack of wild and howling dogs, brawling every night. In time, you learn to become a dog just like them. You always knew how to fight back, always knew where to hit to make them twist and writhe with pain. Learned that lesson while you were young - almost wonder if it’s better that way when you see how some of the other Fighters crumple. They’re not like you, they’re pretty, blonde, they speak a different language, don’t have your colony accent. Always feel the worst about hitting them, soft bodies, soft hearts, crumple like a sack of potatoes, because you’re big and strong, now. You’re hard lines and jutting angles and hollow cheeks, fleshing out nicely because they feed you here, no more vomiting bile from going without eating for days on end.

You make friends with a couple of colony Russians, smoke your first cigarette with them (don’t like it much). Play cards and drink bootleg vodka that tastes more like petrol than anything else, fumes so potent you can set their vapor on fire just for shits and giggles (like that a lot better.) Sometimes you do the things to them that you did to the old men back home (like that best of all.) Except this time, you don’t mind it as much because you want to touch their hard bodies, want to explore them, want to let them explore you. You wonder if they’re so hungry for you because they’re as lonely as you are. 

You try asking one late one night, his sweaty figure pressed up against yours, the both of you stinking of sweat and petrol and cum. He grabs your chin roughly, snarls at you, _‘Zatknis'! Idi nahui!_ ’ 

You don’t ask anyone that question again.

\-------

You are twenty-two years old when you fall in love with a boy who doesn’t love himself. He’s tall and sleek and handsome; he looks nothing like you. Can’t place his accent, don’t ever ask him where he’s from - don’t want to insult him; know how some people feel about being from the colonies, afraid he might be like that about wherever he calls home. Always feel like you have to walk on eggshells around him - he’s one of the sensitive ones, one of the ones with a soft heart. 

(You are called Helios, now and he is your Navigator, Selene.)

You come to find out that his mind is as beautiful as his body; he’s always talking to you in ways you don’t understand, phrases you can’t comprehend, telling you what it is that he does, what his job is. Makes you feel a little stupid and kind of like a failure because you wanted to be a Navigator too, but you smile and nod and listen because you know he likes that. Seen how his face lights up when you come ‘round, caught him staring at you when he thinks you can’t see him.  

You get sick one week, real sick, got the worst fever of your life, can’t move, can’t think. He doesn’t leave your side, sits next to you and strokes your hair, holds your too-hot hand, kisses your too-hot forehead. He’s got a big book of poetry, he reads you something real nice. Says it’s called _Lullaby_ , by a fellow named Auden; you don’t know who that is (and you’ve never had a lullaby before), but you breathe easier just because he’s there. You see the way he looks at you, the way his whole body is tense with worry and grief over your suffering. Touch his face gently before you fall asleep, swear you see his shoulders slump with relief. Tell him it’s all right, all right because he’s here. Coax a smile out of him, that’s the best medicine. Cures what ails you.

You aren’t really sure how it happens, but one day he’s in your lap after training, and he’s hard against you. Never wanted to touch anybody so badly as you want to touch him. Got a body so beautiful, so perfect, that it could make _David_ himself weep with jealousy. Take the both of you in hand, stroke yourself and him off at the same time, him kissing softly at your neck and clinging to you, your nose buried in his hair. He smells sweet and heady, like incense. Doesn’t just get up and leave afterward, stays sitting in your lap for awhile, just holding on, clinging, face buried against your neck. Says something sweet to you in a language you don’t understand, kisses the tip of your nose.Always soft kisses, sweet, romantic. Never blushed before in your life, but blushing fiercely now, and he laughs (sounds just like music, better than music, prettiest sound you’ve ever heard), and hops up off you, then helps you out.

He still always seems so quiet and insecure to you, always working himself half to death, looking so tired all the time. Get to know him better, fall asleep with his head on your chest, him tracing words onto your bare skin in a language whose script you don’t know. Sometimes he reads to you, shows you his tablet, tells you all about constellations and nebulae, about the galaxies you’re traveling through. He speaks in terms of physics and esoteric science that you don’t understand, looks shyly up to you for approval, and you kiss his forehead over and over and just tell him that he’s beautiful and perfect and good, because you are falling hard, impossibly hard, for him, and you want him to love himself the way you love him.

He saves your life one day - boyfriend of another colony Russian you kind of know gone real sick in the head, messed up all sorts of things, sabotaging the ship. You’re choking because there’s not enough air, and he is, too, wheezing as he works at the ship’s main computers, trying to restore life support. Your vision’s greying out when you hear the engines come whirring back on, and all you want to do is to kiss him there and then, to hold onto him and never let him go.

And you do, later. You help the colony Russian (Cain is his name; you’ve shared hootch with him a couple times, talked about your life a little bit - he never talks about his, though) get his little blonde boyfriend up to the med bay, and then you run faster than you’ve ever run in your life back to your bunk.

He’s waiting there for you, sitting on your bunk and smiling beatifically up at you when you come bursting in through the doors. You walk over to him, take his hands in yours, kiss him long and slow and passionate. Nuzzle him, because you know he likes it when you’re gentle, because _he_ is gentle. You willingly give yourself to him, let him slip inside you. It takes your breath away how slow he is; he holds on so tight, kisses you the whole time, soft little kisses. Tip of his darling little nose pressed against your neck, so cold. Got to kiss it, make it warm again, make him warm again, make him love himself. Afterwards, tell him he completes you because he _does_. Love the way his face lights up when you say that, say it again, then hold him until he falls asleep.Never been so happy before, happiest place in the whole universe is this bunk, him curled up against you, holding on so tight.   

(You never knew happiness before but you do now, your fingers laced between his, nose buried in his hair, his sweet breath dancing across your chest. You’d suffer a million blows, cry a million tears, if that path would lead you to him. He’s worth it, all of it. He completes you, most perfect feeling in the whole world, just want to hold on to this forever, live in this moment forever, spend the rest of your life close to him.)

Remember him telling you once about how all things are made of stardust, how all atoms come from the stars. Got more than just the Alliance to fight for, now. Got his soft and perfect heart to protect. Going to do that forever, until you’re returned to atoms and stardust once more.

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Zatknis! Idi nahui!" - Russian: "Shut up, fuck you!"
> 
> I imagine Helios grew up living in a building something like: http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/7c/cb/76/slums.jpg, a very run-down, Soviet-style block.
> 
> The poem Selene is reading to Helios is "Lullaby" by W.H. Auden. It's the kind of poetry I imagine Selene enjoying, sad yet profound.
> 
> I'm imagining Selene speaking Persian (Farsi) here. I speak Arabic, myself, and have several Persian friends who speak Persian and Arabic; I know it gets a reputation as not the prettiest language, but it really is beautiful, especially when spoken softly and intimately, and the script is like a work of art in and of itself.


End file.
